5 minute read
Interview: Tim Jarrett, General
Tim Jarret General Manager/ Partner The Tampa Club/BNG Hospitality
What is The Tampa Club’s mission?
The Tampa Club is a private, city club. It sits on the 41st and 42nd floors of the Bank of America building in Downtown Tampa. The mission is to create an environment where members can engage connect and do business. This year, we celebrated our 37th anniversary. We believe in inclusion. We were one of the first clubs to allow minorities and women as members. The Club was founded on the purpose of inclusion, allowing women and minorities to be apart of the club.This year, we partnered with the Tampa Bay Diversity Chamber of Commerce to further our vision of inclusion.
Members join the club for dierent reasons. Networking is a big component because it allows members to connect with one another and share and grow resources. The club sta treat members as individuals. Members are called by their first name and the sta learns each individual’s likes and dislikes. Members can also take advantage of our private event space for special occasions like weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs, and other celebrations or business gatherings. The club is like a home for our members.
How has the event space evolved in Tampa?
In the last few years, many new event venues have opened in the Tampa market. The older buildings are being remodeled for event space purposes. The hotels in the area are growing their event spaces. There are many more choices than in previous years. They are great choices and very dierent capacities from one another. What separates us is the stunning view of the Bay region and our reputation for a high-quality experience. Next year, we are going to invest in updating the members’ space throughout the club. We want to maximize the way members use the space. We want it to be conducive for work and play, we will continue to improve our ‘oce away from the oce’ concept. I think the Tampa Bay economy will remain robust. The area has a lot of smart, passionate people working to solve challenges like transportation as the area continues to grow. The future looks beautiful and bright for the Tampa Bay region.
In just the first three months of 2019, Tampa’s Downtown hotels saw an 84.4% occupancy rate.
( ) Another factor is Port Tampa Bay, the largest port in the Southeast, serving both cruise lines and freight companies. Cruise giants such as Carnival and Royal Caribbean operate year-round and cruise regularly to Cuba from Port Tampa Bay.
Hotel occupancy in Tampa was up in the period from January to March 2019, according to Visit Tampa Bay. Downtown hotels registered an 84.4% occupancy rate during those three months, an impressive 7.3% increase on the year. The county’s total taxable revenue from hotel stays came in at around $195.5 million – up more than $10 million in comparison to the same period in fiscal year 2018. A big part of a hotel’s attraction is its service offering, according to Jim Bartholomay, General Manager, Renaissance Tampa International Plaza Hotel. “I have worked all over the country and I have never worked in an environment like Tampa Bay where there is genuine hospitality bred into the local residents. The workforce available to us in this region is just phenomenal. Everywhere a person goes in Tampa Bay, they will experience wonderful service and high levels of hospitality. So, when we do have turnover at the hotel, we have the ability to be very selective as to who we bring on the team next. We spend an inordinate amount of time vetting potential employees and asking questions like are you hospitable? Do you like taking care of others? We can take talent from all walks of life that may not have any skills to work in a hotel and we can teach them these skills, but being genuinely hospitable is the only thing that we cannot teach. That is a trait that is either innate or not in a person.”
Even for those guests who chose not to stay in a hotel, online platforms such as Airbnb are still obligated to pay a County Tourist Development Tax at a rate of 5%
Joe Collier President –Mainsail Lodging & Development
From a development standpoint, the one thing that is going to kill and has killed some deals for a lot of people are rising construction costs. Contractors and subcontractors are throwing out pricing that is pretty much putting some deals to bed. We will start to see more deals hit the back burner until this is fixed and the market corrects itself. That being said, some of these high construction costs are balanced by the fact that interest rates have remained low. Due to this balance we are seeing some amount of development still happening, but we are definitely in the eighth or ninth inning in terms of new development in the region.
of the listing price of the property. In 2018, Hillsborough County made $1.1 million in these revenues from Airbnb, Pinellas County made $2.9 million and Polk and Sarasota counties each raked in $1.1 million. And although there has been a great deal of discussion about the impact of the sharing industry on the hotel sector, not everyone sees it as a negative factor: “Regarding the sharing economy, I don’t think it has affected my hotel,” said Randy Kuiken, general manager of the Hilton Garden Inn Tampa Airport Westshore. “I can honestly say that when Airbnb entered the market everyone was concerned about how it was going to be regulated. They follow different rules from those that apply to us. But as time has progressed, they have been getting smarter and are better understanding the concerns of the industry. I do believe some of the larger hotels and extended stay hotels have lost some business because some customers prefer to rent a house or a condo and share the cost, but overall, I think it is just another segment. Some people like it, some others don’t.”
And taxes generated from hotel stays get pumped right back into promoting tourism in Tampa. Raymond James Stadium, for example, recently received approval to use $3 million of the dollars generated by these taxes to market the upcoming Super Bowl. And the tourism industry in Tampa is very much cyclical. Much of the revenues were generated in the first place by events such as The Warrior Games, the 67th Convention of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the educational group Advancement Via Individual Determination, according to Visit Tampa Bay president and CEO Santiago Corrada.
